Reading for Preaching
The Year of Magical Thinking
“Grief, when it comes, is nothing we expect it to be. It was not what I felt when my parents died: my father died a few days short of his eighty-fifth birthday and my mother a month short of her ninety-first, both after some years of increasing debility. What I felt in each instance was...
“The Sutton Place Story” in The Stories of John Cheever
“Renee put on a black dress the next day and took a cab to the funeral parlor. As soon as she opened the door, she was in the hands of a gloved and obsequious usher, ready to sympathize with a grief more profound and sedate than any grief of hers would ever be.”
The Sweet Hereafter
Billy Ansel (who has lost his twin children in a school bus crash) speaks: “Mourning can be very selfish. When someone you love has died, you tend to recall best those few moments and incidents that helped to clarify your sense, not of the person who died, but of your own self. And if you...
Preaching Connection: Grief